46

Chapter 3 47

Cities and Happiness:

A Global Ranking
and Analysis
Jan-Emmanuel De Neve
Director, Wellbeing Research Centre, University of Oxford

Christian Krekel
Assistant Professor, London School of Economics

We are grateful to Sidharth Bhushan and Pekka Vuorenlehto for outstanding

research assistance. The use of the Gallup World Poll and the Gallup US Poll
is generously granted by Gallup, Inc. We received very helpful comments and
suggestions from Lara Aknin, John Helliwell, and Richard Layard.
Introduction
About 4.2 billion people, more than half of
the world’s population (55.3 per cent), are living
in urban areas today. By 2045, this figure is
estimated to increase by 1.5 times, to more than
six billion.1 There were 371 cities with more than
one million inhabitants at the turn of the century
in 2000. In 2018, there were 548, and in 2030, a
projected 706 cities will have at least one million
inhabitants. During the same time, the number of
so-called mega cities – cities that have more than
ten million inhabitants, most of which are located
in the Global South – is expected to increase from
33 to 43, with the fastest growth in Asia and Africa.
Today, Tokyo (37.4 million), New Delhi (28.5
million), and Shanghai (25.6 million inhabitants)
are the most populous cities worldwide.2
Cities are economic powerhouses: more than
80 per cent of worldwide GDP is generated
within their boundaries.3 They allow for an
efficient division of labour, bringing with them
agglomeration and productivity benefits, new
ideas and innovations, and hence higher incomes
and living standards. They often outperform their
countries in terms of economic growth.4 City
dwellers are often younger, more educated, and
more liberal than their rural counterparts. They
are more likely to be in professional and service
jobs, and less likely to have kids. With urbanisation
set to increase, by 2050, seven in ten people
worldwide will be city dwellers.
Rapid urbanisation, however, also imposes
challenges: a lack of affordable housing results
in nearly one billion urban poor living in informal
settlements at the urban periphery, vulnerable
and often exposed to criminal activity. A lack
of public transport infrastructure results in
congestion and often hazardous pollution levels
in inner cities. By one estimate, in 2016, 90 per
cent of city dwellers have been breathing unsafe
air, resulting in 4.2 million deaths due to ambient
air pollution.5 Cities account for about two-thirds
of the world’s energy consumption and for more
than 70 per cent of worldwide greenhouse gas
emissions. Urban sprawl and inefficient land
use contribute to biodiversity loss.6 Rapid
urbanisation also puts pressure on public open
spaces such as parks and urban green areas,
which provide space for social interaction and
important ecosystem services.7,8
Given the speed and scale of urbanisation,
with all its benefits and challenges, how do city
dwellers fare, on balance, when it comes to their
subjective well-being? How did their well-being
change over time? Which cities around the world
promote a higher well-being amongst their
inhabitants than others, conditional on the same
development level? And how does well-being
and well-being inequality within cities relate to
that within countries? This chapter explores
these questions, by providing the first global
48
ranking of cities based on their residents’ self-
reported well-being.
49
Our ranking is fundamentally different from
existing rankings of cities in terms of quality of
life, such as The Economist’s Global Liveability
Index, which ranks cities according to a summary
score constructed from qualitative and quantitative
indicators across five broad domains.9 Rather
than relying on a list of factors that researchers
consider relevant, our ranking relies on city
residents’ self-reports of how they themselves
evaluate the quality of their lives. In doing so, it
emancipates respondents to consider and weigh
for themselves which factors – observable or
unobservable to researchers – they feel matter
most to them. Arguably, this bottom-up approach
gives a direct voice to the population as opposed
to the more top-down approach of deciding
ex-ante what ought to matter for the well-being
of city residents. Importantly, leveraging well-
being survey responses is an approach that
allows us to get a more holistic grip on the
drivers of happiness. In fact, employing well-
being surveys allows to figure out the relative
importance of different domains in shaping
well-being, thus providing evidence- based
guidance for policymakers on how to optimize
the well-being of their populations.
The importance of cities for global development
has long been recognised in Sustainable Develop-
ment Goal (SDG) 11, Sustainable Cities and
Communities, which includes targets with clear
relevance for citizens’ life satisfaction, such as
strengthening public transport systems to reduce
congestion and commuting times10, reducing
ambient air pollution11, and improving access to
green and public open spaces12 for all citizens.13,14
Our chapter aims to make an important
contribution to benchmarking progress towards
this goal and its targets in an integrated fashion
by studying the current state of how cities are
World Happiness Report 2020

actually doing when it comes to their citizens’ and ten the best possible life.17 While life evaluation
subjective well-being and, in doing so, by casting is our primary measure of subjective well-being,
an anchor for continuous future benchmarking. we also take into account well-being measures of
how people experience their lives on a day-to-
In what follows, we first describe the
day basis.18 To do so, we turn again – in line with
methodology behind our ranking and present
the methodology applied in the World Happiness
our findings on cities’ happiness around the
Reports – to the Gallup World Poll and the Gallup
world. Then, we analyse whether and how cities’
US Poll, which include items on positive and
happiness has changed during the past decade,
negative affect, constructed from batteries of
whether there exist significant differences
yes-no questions that ask respondents about
between cities and their countries, and whether
their emotional experiences on the previous
there are substantial happiness inequalities
day. For positive affect, we include whether
within cities relative to countries.
respondents experienced enjoyment and whether
they smiled or laughed a lot.19 For negative
affect, we include whether respondents often
Ranking Cities’ Happiness
experienced feeling sadness, worry, and anger
Around the World (apart from the US where we do not have data
on anger for 2014 onwards).20 Indices are then
Methodology
created by averaging across items, and are
As is the case for the ranking of countries in this bound between zero and one. Finally, to elicit
World Happiness Report, our ranking of cities’ respondents’ expectations about their future,
happiness around the world relies on the Gallup we look at future life evaluation, which is a
World Poll, an annual survey that started in 2005 future- oriented Cantril ladder survey item
and that is conducted in more than 160 countries asking respondents where they think that they
covering 99 per cent of the world’s population. It will stand in terms of their quality of life in five
includes at least 1,000 observations per country years from now.
per year, covering both urban and rural areas,
We restrict our analysis to the period 2014 to
with a tendency to oversample major cities. The
2018 and in order to reduce statistical noise, to
survey is nationally representative of the resident
cities with at least 300 observations recorded
population aged 15 and above in each country. To
during this five-year span. Leveraging the US
increase sample size for the US, we complement
Poll, we added the ten largest American cities.
the data with the Gallup US Poll, a survey which
Our definition of what constitutes a city (for the
sampled US adults aged 18 and above nationwide
US) is based on the notion of functional urban
between 2008 and 2017.15 It included at least
areas: territorial and functional units with a
500 observations per day and, importantly,
population of a particular size in which people
asked respondents a similar set of questions as
live, work, access amenities, and interact socially.
does the Gallup World Poll. To ensure that it is
It is preferable over definitions of cities based on,
appropriate to merge the data coming from
say, administrative boundaries, in that it is much
different surveys, we calculated the 2014-2018
more representative of the life realities of most
average current life evaluation score for the
people living in a city. Taken together, our meth-
Gallup US Poll and the World Poll, and found
odological approach leads our ranking of cities’
them to be almost identical: 6.96 for the US
happiness to cover 186 cities across the globe.
Poll and 6.97 for the World Poll. This and other
checks make it possible to integrate the Gallup
US Poll data without the need for re-scaling.16

In line with the methodology of the World

Happiness Reports, our main outcome is current
life evaluation, obtained from the so-called
Cantril ladder, which is an item asking respondents
to imagine themselves on a ladder with steps
numbered from zero at the bottom to ten at the
top, where zero represents the worst possible
Ranking
In our ranking of cities’ happiness around the
world, we first look at current life evaluation – an
evaluative measure of subjective well-being and
our main outcome – and then contrast our
findings with those on expected future life
evaluation of cities’ inhabitants. We also compare
our findings with those on positive and negative
affect on a day-to-day basis, which are experiential
measures, in the follow-up discussion section.
Current Life Evaluation
Figure 3.1 shows the complete list of cities
according to how positively their inhabitants
currently evaluate their lives on average.
As can be seen in Figure 3.1, the top ten are
clearly dominated by Scandinavian cities:
Helsinki (Finland) and Aarhus (Denmark) are
ranked first and second, Copenhagen (Denmark),
Bergen (Norway), and Oslo (Norway) fifth, sixth,
and seventh. Stockholm (Sweden) comes out
ninth. Thus, more than half of the top ten cities
worldwide according to how positively their
inhabitants currently evaluate their lives are
located in Scandinavia. Two of the top ten
cities are located in Australia and New Zealand:
Wellington, the capital of New Zealand, is ranked
third and Brisbane (Australia) is ranked tenth.
The only top ten cities that are not located in
either Scandinavia or Australia and New Zealand
are Zurich (Switzerland) and Tel Aviv (Israel).
Figure 3.1 also shows that the bottom ten cities
are less clustered geographically, but more
correlated in terms of common themes. Although
most cities at the bottom are located in some of
the least developed countries worldwide, mostly
in Africa and the Middle East (with India as a
notable exception), they are distinct from other
less developed countries around the world by
having experienced recent histories of war
(Kabul in Afghanistan and Sanaa in Yemen, which
are at the very bottom of our global ranking);
continuous armed conflict (Gaza in Palestine,
which comes third from the bottom); civil war
(Juba in South Sudan comes fifth, Bangui in the
Central African Republic ninth); political instability
(Cairo in Egypt comes tenth from the bottom);
or devastating natural catastrophes with long-
run impacts (Port-au-Prince in Haiti comes fourth
from the bottom).
Besides their low economic development levels,
therefore, these cities are also located in countries
with high political instability, a strained security
situation, and reoccurring periodic outbreaks of
armed conflict. The impacts of (threat of) war,
armed conflict, and terrorism on subjective
well-being are well-documented in the literature.21
The other cities in the bottom ten according to
how positively their inhabitants evaluate their
current lives are Dar es Salaam in Tanzania
(which comes sixth from the bottom), New Delhi 50
in India (which comes seventh), and Maseru in
Lesotho (which comes eighth). 51
Expected Future Life Evaluation
Figure A1 in Appendix replicates Figure 3.1, but
reports on expected future rather than current
life evaluation. It presents our global ranking of
cities according to how positively their inhabitants
evaluate their expected future lives, as raw means.
Although the top ten according to how cities’
inhabitants evaluate their expected future lives
feature familiar faces such as Aarhus (Denmark),
Copenhagen (Denmark), and Helsinki (Finland),
which rank sixth, seventh, and eighth, and which
also feature in the top ten of current life evaluation
(ranking second, fifth, and first, respectively), it
is fascinating to see that the top ten in terms
of optimistic outlook also includes new cities.
Many of them originate from Latin America and
the Caribbean, as well as many regions in Africa.
In fact, places two, three, and five in terms of
future life evaluation are populated by San
Miguelito (Panama), San Jose (Costa Rica), and
Panama City (Panama), whereas places four and
ten are populated by Accra (Ghana) and Freetown
(Sierra Leone). The most optimistic outlook is
found in Tashkent (Uzbekistan). The finding for
optimism of city dwellers in the Latin American
and Caribbean region is mirrored by high levels
of subjective well-being found in Latin American
societies more generally. Atlanta (US) is also
found in the top ten of optimistic future outlook.
While the top ten feature many new faces, the
bottom ten feature rather familiar ones: city
dwellers in Kabul (Afghanistan), Gaza (Palestine),
and Port-au-Prince (Haiti) – places torn by recent
war, continuous armed conflict, and devastating
natural catastrophes – are the least optimistic
worldwide. Sanaa in Yemen, another war-torn
city, is ranked sixth, whereas Beirut in Lebanon
World Happiness Report 2020

Figures
Figure 3.1: Global Ranking of Cities — Current Life Evaluation (Part 1)

Figure 3.1: Global Ranking of Cities – Current Life Evaluation

Subjective Well-Being Rankings
Subjective Well-Being Rankings (1)
1. Helsinki — Finland (7.828)
2. Aarhus — Denmark (7.625)
3. Wellington — New Zealand (7.553)
4. Zurich — Switzerland (7.541)
5. Copenhagen — Denmark (7.530)
6. Bergen — Norway (7.527)
7. Oslo — Norway (7.464)
8. Tel Aviv — Israel (7.461)
9. Stockholm — Sweden (7.373)
10. Brisbane — Australia (7.337)
11. San Jose — Costa Rica (7.321)
12. Reykjavik — Iceland (7.317)
13. Toronto Metro — Canada (7.298)
14. Melbourne — Australia (7.296)
15. Perth — Australia (7.253)
16. Auckland — New Zealand (7.232)
17. Christchurch — New Zealand (7.191)
18. Washington — USA (7.185)
19. Dallas — USA (7.155)
20. Sydney — Australia (7.133)
21. Houston — USA (7.110)
22. Dublin — Ireland (7.096)
23. Boston — USA (7.091)
24. Goteborg — Sweden (7.080)
25. Chicago — USA (7.033)
26. Atlanta — USA (7.031)
27. Miami — USA (7.028)
28. Philadelphia — USA (7.004)
29. Vienna — Austria (6.998)
30. New York — USA (6.964)
31. Los Angeles — USA (6.956)
32. Cork — Ireland (6.946)
33. Jerusalem — Israel (6.943)
34. San Miguelito — Panama (6.844)
35. Abu Dhabi — UAE (6.808)
36. London — UK (6.782)
37. Santiago — Chile (6.770)
38. Mexico City — Mexico (6.693)
39. Dubai — UAE (6.687)
40. Brussels — Belgium (6.674)
41. Panama City — Panama (6.662)
42. Guatemala City — Guatemala (6.650)
43. Paris — France (6.635)
44. Prague — Czech Republic (6.620)
45. Bogota — Colombia (6.612)
46. Medina — Saudi Arabia (6.592)
47. Taipei — Taiwan (6.517)
48. Madrid — Spain (6.500)
49. Singapore (6.494)
50. Guayaquil — Ecuador (6.491)
51. Montevideo — Uruguay (6.455)
52. Quito — Ecuador (6.437)
53. Sao Paulo — Brazil (6.383)
54. Bratislava — Slovakia (6.383)
55. Barcelona — Spain (6.380)
56. Metro Bangkok — Thailand (6.330)
57. Buenos Aires — Argentina (6.324)
58. San Salvador Metro — El Salvador (6.321)
59. Jeddah — Saudi Arabia (6.314)
60. Kuwait City — Kuwait (6.307)
61. Manama — Bahrain (6.278)
62. Riyadh — Saudi Arabia (6.270)
63. Doha — Qatar (6.260)
64. Managua — Nicaragua (6.242)
65. Mecca — Saudi Arabia (6.226)
66. Kaunas — Lithuania (6.225)
67. Lima Metro — Peru (6.204)
68. Almaty — Kazakhstan (6.181)
69. Ljubljana — Slovenia (6.178)
70. Riga — Latvia (6.175)
71. La Paz — Bolivia (6.165)
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

19
Figure 3.1: Global Ranking of Cities — Current Life Evaluation (Part 2)

(Figure 3.1 Continued)

Subjective
Subjective Well-Being Well-Being Rankings (2)
Rankings
72. Vilnius — Lithuania (6.163)
73. Santa Cruz — Bolivia (6.116)
74. Belgrade — Serbia (6.071)
75. Tashkent — Uzbekistan (6.040)
76. Moscow — Russia (6.028)
77. Asuncion Metro — Paraguay (6.012)
78. St. Petersburg — Russia (5.994)
79. Tokyo — Japan (5.989)
80. Pafos — Cyprus (5.981) 52
81. Bucharest — Romania (5.974)
82. Chisinau — Moldova (5.967)
83. Seoul — South Korea (5.947) 53
84. Shanghai — China (5.936)
85. Limassol — Cyprus (5.932)
86. Tegucigalpa — Honduras (5.924)
87. Nicosia — Cyprus (5.904)
88. Incheon — South Korea (5.887)
89. Metro Manila — Philippines (5.810)
90. San Pedro Sula — Honduras (5.810)
91. Sarajevo — Bosnia and Herzegovina (5.795)
92. Lefkosia — Northern Cyprus (5.788)
93. Algiers — Algeria (5.781)
94. Thessaloniki — Greece (5.778)
95. Guangzhou — China (5.761)
96. Ankara — Turkey (5.749)
97. Minsk — Belarus (5.714)
98. Ashgabat — Turkmenistan (5.708)
99. Tallinn — Estonia (5.679)
100. Niamey — Niger (5.676)
101. Lisbon — Portugal (5.660)
102. Daegu — South Korea (5.646)
103. Budapest — Hungary (5.642)
104. Port-Louis — Mauritius (5.616)
105. Kathmandu — Nepal (5.606)
106. Dushanbe — Tajikistan (5.601)
107. Busan — South Korea (5.587)
108. Baku — Azerbaijan (5.571)
109. Sofia — Bulgaria (5.563)
110. Zagreb — Croatia (5.536)
111. Tripoli — Libya (5.528)
112. Benghazi — Libya (5.508)
113. Larnaka — Cyprus (5.485)
114. Hong Kong (5.444)
115. Istanbul — Turkey (5.440)
116. Santo Domingo — Dominican Republic (5.435)
117. Karachi — Pakistan (5.432)
118. Bishkek — Kyrgyzstan (5.418)
119. Caracas — Venezuela (5.391)
120. Johannesburg — South Africa (5.361)
121. Athens — Greece (5.345)
122. Lahore — Pakistan (5.309)
123. Mogadishu — Somalia (5.304)
124. Skopje — Macedonia (5.302)
125. Freetown — Sierra Leone (5.293)
126. Tirana — Albania (5.285)
127. Prishtine — Kosovo (5.284)
128. Amman — Jordan (5.275)
129. Accra — Ghana (5.267)
130. Cape Town — South Africa (5.265)
131. Windhoek — Namibia (5.262)
132. Dakar — Senegal (5.256)
133. Izmir — Turkey (5.250)
134. Beijing — China (5.228)
135. Hanoi — Vietnam (5.196)
136. Ulaanbaatar — Mongolia (5.186)
137. Casablanca — Morocco (5.180)
138. Ho Chi Minh — Vietnam (5.155)
139. Nairobi — Kenya (5.150)
140. Brazzaville — Congo Brazzaville (5.135)
141. Douala — Cameroon (5.124)
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

20
World Happiness Report 2020

Figure 3.1: Global Ranking of Cities — Current Life Evaluation (Part 3)

(Figure 3.1 Continued)

Subjective Well-Being Rankings
Subjective Well-Being Rankings (3)
142. Kiev — Ukraine (5.051)
143. Vientiane/Vianchan — Laos (5.037)
144. Maracaibo — Venezuela (5.009)
145. Cotonou — Benin (5.006)
146. Yaounde — Cameroon (4.993)
147. Conakry — Guinea (4.951)
148. Libreville — Gabon (4.899)
149. NDjamena — Chad (4.891)
150. Lusaka — Zambia (4.884)
151. Pointe-Noire — Congo Brazzaville (4.880)
152. Abidjan — Ivory Coast (4.847)
153. Ouagadougou — Burkina Faso (4.814)
154. Male — Maldives (4.787)
155. Tehran — Iran (4.722)
156. Mashhad — Iran (4.715)
157. Bamako — Mali (4.662)
158. Alexandria — Egypt (4.660)
159. Yerevan — Armenia (4.650)
160. Kinshasa — Congo DR (Kinshasa) (4.622)
161. Beirut — Lebanon (4.620)
162. Nouakchott — Mauritania (4.607)
163. Baghdad — Iraq (4.557)
164. Tbilisi — Georgia (4.510)
165. Yangon — Myanmar (4.473)
166. Tunis — Tunisia (4.456)
167. Phnom Penh — Cambodia (4.442)
168. Gaborone — Botswana (4.442)
169. Lome — Togo (4.441)
170. Colombo — Sri Lanka (4.381)
171. Harare — Zimbabwe (4.355)
172. Antananarivo — Madagascar (4.348)
173. Monrovia — Liberia (4.291)
174. Khartoum — Sudan (4.139)
175. Kumasi — Ghana (4.133)
176. Kigali — Rwanda (4.126)
177. Cairo — Egypt (4.088)
178. Bangui — CAR (4.025)
179. Maseru — Lesotho (4.023)
180. Delhi — India (4.011)
181. Dar es Salaam — Tanzania (3.961)
182. Juba — South Sudan (3.866)
183. Port-au-Prince — Haiti (3.807)
184. Gaza — Palestine (3.485)
185. Sanaa — Yemen (3.377)
186. Kabul — Afghanistan (3.236)
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Notes: The scatterplot takes into account all cities worldwide with at least 300 observations in the Gallup World Poll
during the period 2014-2018 as well as the ten largest cities in the US using data from the Gallup US Poll.

Sources: Gallup World Poll, Gallup US Poll.

Notes: The list takes into account all cities worldwide with at least 300 observations in the
Gallup World Poll during the period 2014-2018 as well as the ten largest cities in the US us-
ing data from the Gallup US Daily Poll. The outcome measure is current life evaluation on a
zero-to-ten scale. Figures are raw means. Confidence bands are 95%.
Sources: Gallup World Poll, Gallup US Daily Poll.

21
(bordering Syria) is ranked fourth from the
bottom. As with current life evaluation, New
Delhi (India) scores rather low when it comes to
the optimistic outlook of its inhabitants (ranked
fifth from the bottom). Likewise, cities in Egypt
(here Alexandria, which is ranked eighth from the
bottom) are quite pessimistic places when it
comes to the future, and so are cities located in
Iran (Tehran, the capital, is ranked ninth and
Mashhad is ranked tenth from the bottom).
These are places that have seen economically
difficult times recently. The only European city
in the bottom ten cities of how positively their
inhabitants evaluate their future lives is Athens
in Greece, which may be explained by the recent
economic crisis in the country.
Is there predictive power from these self-predicted
future scores? To check this, we regress current
life evaluation on life evaluation scores pre-2014
and expected life evaluation scores pre-2014. In
this multivariate regression, we find that life
evaluation scores pre-2014 are highly significant,
while expected future life evaluation scores
pre-2014 are not significant. Even when doing a
univariate regression of current life evaluation
scores on expected life evaluation only, we find
that it is not significant. This perhaps shows that
people are not quite able to accurately predict
their future life evaluation and the best indicator
of the future is current life evaluation.
Positive and Negative Affect
Whereas life evaluation is a cognitive-evaluative
measure of subjective well-being that asks
respondents to evaluate their lives relative to
an ideal life, positive and negative affect are
experiential measures that ask respondents to
report on their emotional experiences on the
previous day. They are thus less prone to social
narratives, comparisons, or issues of adaptation
and anticipation. Contrary to life evaluation, they
also take into account the duration of experiences,
arguably an important dimension when it comes
to people’s overall quality of life. Figure A2 in the
Appendix replicates our global ranking of city
happiness for positive affect, Figure A3 for
negative affect.
When it comes to the worldwide top ten in
terms of positive affect, we find that six out of
ten cities originate from the Latin America and
Caribbean region. For some of these places,
these scores may come as a surprise, given the
difficult economic situations in the countries in
which these cities are located. Yet to some
extent this finding mirrors our finding on expected
future life evaluation: city dwellers in the Latin
American and Caribbean region are not only
looking more optimistically into the future than
their current levels of life evaluation would predict,
but also report higher levels of momentary
happiness and joy. The generally high level
of affective well-being in the region is well-
documented in the literature22 and may be due 54
to, for example, stronger family relationships,
55
social capital, and culture-related factors. Note
that since the Gallup World Poll is nationally
representative, it is unlikely that self-selection
of survey respondents who are exceptionally
happy are driving our results.
We find cities in areas that are in current or past
conflict zones at the bottom in terms of positive
affect. Somewhat surprising is the large number
of Turkish city dwellers reporting low positive
affect, including people living in Ankara, Istanbul,
and Izmir. Perhaps less surprising, most cities
that score low on positive affect also score high
on negative affect, as seen in Figure A3.
Further Analysis
Changes Over Time
So far, our global ranking of cities’ happiness has
looked at a snapshot of happiness, taken as the
average happiness across the period 2014 to
2018. Naturally, the question arises how cities’
happiness has changed over the years. To answer
this question, in Figure 3.2 we calculate the
change in life evaluation for each city against its
average life evaluation in the period 2005 to
2013. The Gallup World Poll was initiated in
2005, which is the earliest possible measurement
we can use for our purposes.
Some cities have experienced significant positive
changes in their citizens’ happiness over the past
decade: changes above 0.5 points in life evaluation,
which is measured on a zero-to-ten scale, can be
considered very large changes; a change of 0.5
points is approximately the change when finding
gainful employment after a period of unemploy-
ment.23 The top ten cities in our global ranking in
terms of change have experienced changes of
World Happiness Report 2020

Figure 3.2: Global Ranking of Cities — Changes in Current Life Evaluation (Part 1)

Figure 3.2: Global Ranking of Cities – Changes in Current Life Evaluation

Change in Subjective Well-Being
Change in Subjective Well-Being (1)
1. Abidjan — Ivory Coast (0.981)
2. Dushanbe — Tajikistan (0.950)
3. Vilnius — Lithuania (0.939)
4. Almaty — Kazakhstan (0.922)
5. Cotonou — Benin (0.918)
6. Sofia — Bulgaria (0.899)
7. Dakar — Senegal (0.864)
8. Conakry — Guinea (0.833)
9. Niamey — Niger (0.812)
10. Brazzaville — Congo Brazzaville (0.787)
11. Ouagadougou — Burkina Faso (0.783)
12. Freetown — Sierra Leone (0.765)
13. Riga — Latvia (0.738)
14. Guayaquil — Ecuador (0.734)
15. Douala — Cameroon (0.718)
16. San Pedro Sula — Honduras (0.703)
17. Belgrade — Serbia (0.692)
18. Libreville — Gabon (0.624)
19. Guangzhou — China (0.590)
20. Kigali — Rwanda (0.524)
21. Bucharest — Romania (0.515)
22. Budapest — Hungary (0.506)
23. Nairobi — Kenya (0.451)
24. Kaunas — Lithuania (0.433)
25. Thessaloniki — Greece (0.425)
26. Lisbon — Portugal (0.421)
27. Kathmandu — Nepal (0.411)
28. Skopje — Macedonia (0.384)
29. Wellington — New Zealand (0.372)
30. Guatemala City — Guatemala (0.359)
31. Yaounde — Cameroon (0.347)
32. Shanghai — China (0.345)
33. Christchurch — New Zealand (0.342)
34. San Salvador Metro — El Salvador (0.338)
35. Alexandria — Egypt (0.333)
36. Istanbul — Turkey (0.321)
37. Tirana — Albania (0.317)
38. Tallinn — Estonia (0.312)
39. Dublin — Ireland (0.293)
40. Metro Manila — Philippines (0.292)
41. Helsinki — Finland (0.270)
42. Taipei — Taiwan (0.269)
43. Bamako — Mali (0.269)
44. Tashkent — Uzbekistan (0.260)
45. Lome — Togo (0.256)
46. Baku — Azerbaijan (0.254)
47. Israel — Tel Aviv (0.250)
48. Tegucigalpa — Honduras (0.238)
49. Yerevan — Armenia (0.236)
50. NDjamena — Chad (0.222)
51. Lahore — Pakistan (0.221)
52. Quito — Ecuador (0.215)
53. Karachi — Pakistan (0.195)
54. Miami — USA (0.174)
55. Ulaanbaatar — Mongolia (0.157)
56. London — UK (0.145)
57. Madrid — Spain (0.138)
58. Izmir — Turkey (0.138)
59. Bishkek — Kyrgyzstan (0.116)
60. Chicago — USA (0.109)
61. Bratislava — Slovakia (0.108)
62. Tripoli — Libya (0.105)
63. San Jose — Costa Rica (0.103)
64. Minsk — Belarus (0.102)
65. Aarhus — Denmark (0.097)
66. Dallas — USA (0.095)
67. Tehran — Iran (0.094)
68. Mashhad — Iran (0.079)
69. Chisinau — Moldova (0.073)
70. St. Petersburg — Russia (0.068)
71. Santiago — Chile (0.057)
-3 -2.5 -2 -1.5 -1 -0.5 0 0.5 1 1.5

22
Figure 3.2: Global Ranking of Cities — Changes in Current Life Evaluation (Part 2)
(Figure 3.2 Continued)

Change in Subjective
Change Well-Being
in Subjective Well-Being (2)
72. Boston — USA (0.056)
73. Auckland — New Zealand (0.052)
74. Antananarivo — Madagascar (0.051)
75. Philadelphia — USA (0.049)
76. Port-Louis — Mauritius (0.049)
77. Lima Metro — Peru (0.048)
78. New York — USA (0.042)
79. Houston — USA (0.041)
80. Montevideo — Uruguay (0.036) 56
81. Brussels — Belgium (0.033)
82. Athens — Greece (0.023)
83. Washington — USA (0.022) 57
84. Atlanta — USA (0.013)
85. Santo Domingo — Dominican Republic (0.013)
86. Colombo — Sri Lanka (0.011)
87. Phnom Penh — Cambodia (0.009)
88. Metro Bangkok — Thailand (0.005)
89. Santa Cruz — Bolivia (-0.001)
90. Hong Kong (-0.002)
91. Managua — Nicaragua (-0.010)
92. Asuncion Metro — Paraguay (-0.013)
93. Nouakchott — Mauritania (-0.036)
94. Ljubljana — Slovenia (-0.038)
95. Toronto Metro — Canada (-0.044)
96. Port-au-Prince — Haiti (-0.048)
97. Sarajevo — Bosnia and Herzegovina (-0.049)
98. Singapore (-0.055)
99. Melbourne — Australia (-0.063)
100. Stockholm — Sweden (-0.063)
101. Tbilisi — Georgia (-0.086)
102. Cape Town — South Africa (-0.087)
103. Baghdad — Iraq (-0.091)
104. Casablanca — Morocco (-0.092)
105. Barcelona — Spain (-0.095)
106. Ankara — Turkey (-0.096)
107. Paris — France (-0.096)
108. Moscow — Russia (-0.097)
109. Dar es Salaam — Tanzania (-0.104)
110. Sydney — Australia (-0.130)
111. Copenhagen — Denmark (-0.131)
112. Cairo — Egypt (-0.135)
113. Limassol — Cyprus (-0.138)
114. Oslo — Norway (-0.158)
115. Lusaka — Zambia (-0.161)
116. Gaborone — Botswana (-0.166)
117. Prague — Czech Republic (-0.166)
118. Yangon — Myanmar (-0.174)
119. Monrovia — Liberia (-0.177)
120. Hanoi — Vietnam (-0.195)
121. Johannesburg — South Africa (-0.210)
122. La Paz — Bolivia (-0.219)
123. Accra — Ghana (-0.230)
124. Algiers — Algeria (-0.237)
125. Vienna — Austria (-0.238)
126. Tokyo — Japan (-0.244)
127. Amman — Jordan (-0.245)
128. Dubai — UAE (-0.263)
129. Seoul — South Korea (-0.263)
130. Riyadh — Saudi Arabia (-0.264)
131. Buenos Aires — Argentina (-0.283)
132. Cork — Ireland (-0.287)
133. Reykjavik — Iceland (-0.314)
134. Jerusalem — Israel (-0.326)
135. Zurich — Switzerland (-0.344)
136. Vientiane/Vianchan — Laos (-0.359)
137. Beijing — China (-0.366)
138. Ho Chi Minh — Vietnam (-0.380)
139. Kiev — Ukraine (-0.396)
140. Kuwait City — Kuwait (-0.398)
-3 -2.5 -2 -1.5 -1 -0.5 0 0.5 1 1.5

23
World Happiness Report 2020

Figure 3.2: Global Ranking of Cities — Changes in Current Life Evaluation (Part 3)
(Figure 3.2 Continued)
Change in Subjective Well-Being
Change in Subjective Well-Being (3)
141. Bogota — Colombia (-0.399)
142. Bangui — CAR (-0.401)
143. Ashgabat — Turkmenistan (-0.406)
144. Daegu — South Korea (-0.426)
145. Doha — Qatar (-0.427)
146. Beirut — Lebanon (-0.469)
147. Goteborg — Sweden (-0.484)
148. Kinshasa — Congo DR (Kinshasa) (-0.524)
149. Khartoum — Sudan (-0.546)
150. Pointe-Noire — Congo Brazzaville (-0.559)
151. Zagreb — Croatia (-0.565)
152. Incheon — South Korea (-0.575)
153. Sao Paulo — Brazil (-0.583)
154. Nicosia — Cyprus (-0.585)
155. Busan — South Korea (-0.589)
156. Panama City — Panama (-0.606)
157. San Miguelito — Panama (-0.612)
158. Tunis — Tunisia (-0.672)
159. Manama — Bahrain (-0.702)
160. Abu Dhabi — UAE (-0.704)
161. Harare — Zimbabwe (-0.735)
162. Jeddah — Saudi Arabia (-0.746)
163. Gaza — Palestine (-0.966)
164. Mexico City — Mexico (-0.978)
165. Delhi — India (-1.020)
166. Kabul — Afghanistan (-1.027)
167. Larnaka — Cyprus (-1.195)
168. Sanaa — Yemen (-1.428)
169. Prishtine — Kosovo (-1.498)
170. Kumasi — Ghana (-1.662)
171. Caracas — Venezuela (-1.706)
172. Maracaibo — Venezuela (-1.797)
173. Maseru — Lesotho (-2.196)
-3 -2.5 -2 -1.5 -1 -0.5 0 0.5 1 1.5

Notes: The list takes into account all cities worldwide with at least 300 observations in the Gallup World Poll during
Notes:
the period The list
2014-2018 takes
as well as into account
the ten largest all cities
cities worldwide
in the withfrom
US using data at least 300 observations
the Gallup in the
US Poll. The outcome
measure is the change in current life evaluation from 2005-2013 to 2014-2018 on a zero-to-ten scale. Figures are raw
Gallup World Poll during the period 2014-2018 as well as the ten largest cities in the US us-
means. Confidence bands are 95%.
ing data from the Gallup US Daily Poll. The outcome measure is the change in current life
Sources:evaluation from
Gallup World Poll,2005-2013 to 2014-2018
Gallup US Poll. on a zero-to-ten scale. Figures are raw means. Con-
fidence bands are 95%.
Sources: Gallup World Poll, Gallup US Daily Poll.

0.75 points or more. They are predominantly in
Africa, Eastern Europe, or Central Asia. The city
with the largest positive change is Abidjan (Ivory
Coast). Other cities that have experienced large
positive changes in Africa are Cotonou (Benin),
Dakar (Senegal), Conakry (Guinea), Niamey
(Niger), and Brazzaville (Congo), which are ranked
fifth, seventh, eighth, ninth, and tenth in our
global ranking of changes. Dushanbe (Tajikistan)
and Almaty (Kazakhstan) – two former Soviet
republics located in Central Asia – are ranked
second and fourth, respectively. Strong improve-
ments are also found in Vilnius (Lithuania) and
Sofia (Bulgaria), two capital cities in countries
that are now part of the European Union. Other
cities in or at the fringes of the European Union
that have made substantial progress (of 0.5 or
more points on the zero-to-ten life evaluation
scale) are Riga (Latvia), ranked 13, Belgrade
(Serbia), ranked 17, Bucharest (Romania), ranked
22, and Budapest (Hungary), ranked 23.
While some cities have experienced large
24
increases in their citizens’ happiness over
the past decade, others have experienced
tremendous reductions, often by more than an In sum, there have been winners and losers in
entire point on the zero-to-ten life evaluation terms of changes in cities’ happiness over the
scale. The strongest reduction is found in Maseru, past decade. On a global scale, has happiness in
the capital of Lesotho, which has seen current cities increased or decreased? On average, there
life evaluation decrease by more than two points. has been a decrease in mean city happiness over
Maracaibo and Caracas, the second largest city the past decade. However, this decrease is driven
and the capital of Venezuela, are placed second by very strong reductions in city happiness at
and third from the bottom, respectively. Other the very bottom of our global ranking. If we were
cities that have seen large decreases are Pristina to exclude Maseru (Lesotho), Maracaibo and
(Kosovo), Sanaa (Yemen), and Kabul (Afghanistan), Caracas (both Venezuela), Sanaa (Yemen), Kabul
which come fifth, sixth, and seventh from the (Afghanistan), and Gaza (Palestine) – cities
bottom, respectively. Perhaps less surprising, which have been facing exceptional challenges 58

most of these cities – together with New Delhi – from our global ranking, we could say that
59
(India), ranked ninth, and Mexico City (Mexico), happiness in cities worldwide has increased in
ranked tenth from the bottom – also score low recent years.
when it comes to expected future life evaluation.
People living in these cities are not optimistic City-Country Differences
about their future. Somewhat new on the
Another interesting question is whether or not
radar are Kumasi (Ghana) and Larnaka
our global ranking of cities is determined by
(Cyprus), which have also experienced strong
something different than the mean happiness of
reductions in happiness over the past decade.
the counties in which they are located. One way

Figure 3.3: Subjective Well-being in Cities and Countries

Subjective Well-being in Cities and Countries

10

6
City Well-being Score

0
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
Country Well-being Score

Notes: The scatterplot takes into account all cities worldwide with at least 300 observations in the Gallup World Poll
during the period 2014-2018 as well as the ten largest cities in the US using data from the Gallup US Poll.

Sources: Gallup World Poll, Gallup US Poll.

World Happiness Report 2020

of testing this is to use country mean happiness
scores to predict city rankings, and then to look
for significant outliers. As Figure 3.3 suggests,
residents of cities are somewhat happier than
the mean happiness of their respective country
populations suggests. This global difference
amounts to, on average, 0.2 points on the zero-
to-ten life evaluation scale. What stands out from
this analysis, however, is that this difference is
greater for city residents at the lower end of the
well-being scale before it diminishes and often
reverses at the top-end: residents of cities at the
lower end are about 0.5 points happier than the
average populations in their respective countries.
This observation appears to corroborate Morrison’s
model, which suggests such a skewed relationship
for reasons that are considered in more detail in
chapter 4 of this report.24
Following Morrison, we split the sample into
high-income and low-income countries in order
to get a better sense for the different slopes in
the relationship between city residents’ happiness
and their respective country average happiness.25
Figures 3.4 and Figure 3.5 illustrate these different
slopes at different levels of economic develop-
ment: for low-income city-country pairs we can
confidently reject the hypothesis that the line of
best fit shown in Figure 3.4 is the same as the
45-degree line (F-test = 35.72). The same is not
the case for the line of best fit in Figure 3.5,
which relates to high-income city-country pairs.
Here, we cannot statistically distinguish it from
the 45-degree line (F-test = 3.59). These results
imply that the average country happiness is a
very strong predictor of city happiness at higher
levels of well-being and economic development.
However, this is somewhat less the case for
countries at lower levels. In fact, while the general
correlation coefficient between country-city
pairs stands at 0.96, the correlation coefficient is
slightly lower at 0.90 for the low-income group.

Figure 3.4: Subjective Well-being in Cities and Countries (Low Income)

Subjective Well-being in Cities and Countries (Low Income)

8

6
City Well-being Score

3
3 4 5 6 7 8
Country Well-being Score

Notes: The scatterplot takes into account all cities worldwide with at least 300 observations in the Gallup World Poll
during the period 2014-2018 as well as the ten largest cities in the US using data from the Gallup US Poll.

Sources: Gallup World Poll, Gallup US Poll.

 Figure 3.5: Subjective Well-being in Cities and Countries (High Income)

Subjective Well-being in Cities and Countries (High Income)

8

60

6 61
City Well-being Score

3
3 4 5 6 7 8
Country Well-being Score

Notes: The scatterplot takes into account all cities worldwide with at least 300 observations in the Gallup World Poll
during the period 2014-2018 as well as the ten largest cities in the US using data from the Gallup US Poll.

Sources: Gallup World Poll, Gallup US Poll.

Generally, we find that the average happiness of Well-being Inequality in Cities and Countries
city residents is more often than not higher than
A related question asks not so much whether
the average happiness of the general country
cities are, on average, happier places than their
population, especially at the lower end of the
surrounding countries, but rather whether
well-being and national income scales. Thus, when
happiness inequality is different within cities as
contrasting the positive agglomeration and produc-
compared to countries. In other words: is the
tivity benefits of urbanisation and urban amenities
difference between the least happy and the
with its disadvantages due to disamenities such as
happiest person, on average, greater or smaller
congestion or pollution, it seems that, on balance,
in cities than in their respective countries?
city dwellers fare slightly better than the remainder
of the population, at least when it comes to current Figure 3.6 sheds light on this question by plotting
life evaluation as our measure of comparison. Of the standard deviation of city happiness relative
course, this does not mean that moving into a city to the standard deviation of country happiness,
makes everybody happier: people living in cities both measured in terms of current life evaluation.
differ in important observable and unobservable The standard deviation is a measure of how
characteristics from their rural counterparts, which dispersed a set of numbers is and can hence
could very well explain the difference in happiness serve as a simple measure of inequality in this
that we observe. Our analysis is purely descriptive case. As before, the 45-degree line indicates the
and cannot make causal claims about the effects points at which there is no difference between
of urbanisation itself on happiness. the standard deviation in country and city
World Happiness Report 2020

Figure 3.6: Well-being Inequality in Cities and Countries

City vs Country Standard Deviation Comparison

3.5

2.5
City Standard Deviation

1.5

0.5

0
0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3 3.5
Country Standard Deviation

Notes: The scatterplot takes into account all cities worldwide with at least 300 observations in the Gallup World Poll
during the period 2014-2018 as well as the ten largest cities in the US using data from the Gallup US Poll. This analysis
did not use the weighted data.

Sources: Gallup World Poll, Gallup US Poll.

happiness scores. If a city lies above the

45-degree line, it has a higher level of happiness
inequality than its respective country; if it lies
below, it has a lower level.

As Figure 3.6 shows, the scatterplot is almost

evenly spread around the 45-degree line,
suggesting that there are no systematic differences
in happiness inequality between cities and their
countries. In other words, the difference between
the least happy and the happiest person is, on
average, not much different in cities than in the
country at large. Of course, this does not mean
that there are large differences on a case-by-
case basis: in fact, for some cities and countries,
happiness inequality is much larger at the country-
level, whereas for others, it is much larger at the
city-level. This is an important area for future
research, with important policy implications for
urbanisation and rural exodus.
Conclusion relying on pre-defined dimensions of quality
of life. Studying these differences about what
In this chapter, we provided the first-ever global
matters most for city residents’ quality of life
ranking and analysis of cities’ happiness. Allowing
is–besides a continuous monitoring and
for an efficient division of labour, cities bring
benchmarking of cities’ happiness around the
with them agglomeration and productivity
world–an important next step.
benefits, inspiring new ideas and innovations,
and the generation of higher incomes and living
standards. At the same time, however, cities
create negative externalities such as urban
sprawl, crime, congestion, and often hazardous
pollution levels. As half of the world’s population 62
is living in cities today, and since this number is
expected to rise to two third by the middle of 63
the century, studying how city dwellers fare on
balance when it comes to their quality of life is
an important undertaking. Casting an anchor,
and continuously monitoring and benchmarking
city dwellers’ quality of life around the world, is
also an important step towards implementing
Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 11:
Sustainable Cities and Communities.

We rank cities’ quality of life fundamentally

differently than existing rankings: our ranking
relies entirely on city dwellers’ self-reported
quality of life, measured in terms of their
subjective well-being. One might criticise our
ranking for relying only on subjective indicators.
We argue that this is precisely their advantage.
We are not relying on a limited number of
objective dimensions of quality of life, often
defined ex-ante according to what researchers
(or policy-makers) consider important. Instead,
our ranking is bottom up, emancipating city
dwellers to consider for themselves which
factors they feel matter most to them. Arguably,
this makes it also a more democratic way of
measuring their quality of lives.

Our ranking of cities’ happiness does not yield

fundamentally different results than existing
rankings: Scandinavian cities and cities in Australia
and New Zealand score high when it comes to
the subjective well-being of their residents; cities
in countries with histories of political instability,
(civil) war, armed conflict, and recent incidences
of terrorism score low. Deploying a diverse set
of subjective well-being indicators, including
evaluative measures such as current and future
life evaluation as well as experiential measures
such as positive and negative affect, our ranking
paints an internally consistent image. Yet, there
are significant differences to other rankings
World Happiness Report 2020

Endnotes

1 See The World Bank (2019a). 17 If not stated otherwise, we use the terms life evaluation, life
satisfaction, and happiness inter-changeably.
2 See United Nations (2018).
18 See Dolan (2014) and Dolan and Kudrna (2016).
3 See The World Bank (2019a).
19 Note that the ‘happiness’ survey item is no longer available
4 See Kilroy et al. (2015).
after 2012 so that the index is comprised of ‘enjoyment’ and
5 See United Nations (2019). ‘smile or laugh’ from 2012 onwards.

6 See The World Bank (2019b). 20 For the US cities, we use the Gallup US Poll in exactly the
same way as the Gallup World Poll, with the sole exception
7 See European Commission (2013).
of not including ‘anger’ as part of the negative affect index
8 In psychology, there is a large and growing stream of because it is unavailable in the US Poll.
literature looking at how our environment affects our brain
21 For example, see Frey et al. (2007, 2009), van Praag et al.
structure and function, suggesting that more ‘enriched’
(2010), and Metcalfe et al. (2011)
environments that are more complex and provide more
stimulation facilitate brain plasticity (see Kuehn et al. (2017) 22 See Graham and Lora (2009) and Rojas (2016)
on urban land use). While urban ‘richness’ may promote
23 For example, see De Neve and Ward (2017), Clark et al.
brain development, several studies suggest that living in
(2018), and Krekel et al. (2018)
denser urban environments is associated with lower mental
health and certain mental health conditions (Tost et al., 24 See Morrison (2018)
2015; van Os et al., 2010).
25 We split our sample into low-income and high-income
9 See The Economist Intelligence Unit (2019). countries based on the World Bank’s categorization of low,
lower middle, upper middle, and high-income countries.
10 See, for example Stutzer and Frey (2008), Dickerson et al.
High-income countries are considered those with a GNI
(2014), and Loschiavo (2019).
per capita of $12,376 or more (World Bank, 2020).
11 See, for example Luechinger (2009), Levinson (2012),
Ferreira et al. (2013), Ambrey et al. (2014a), and Zhang
et al. (2017).

12 See, for example, White et al. (2013) Ambrey and Fleming

(2014b), Bertram and Rehdanz (2015), Krekel et al. (2016),
and Bertram et al. (2020).

13 See United Nations (2019).

14 By referring to “all citizens”, SDG 11 makes an explicit

reference to being inclusive, which is an important point
as evidence shows that urban amenities and disamenities
are of differential importance for citizens with different
socio-demographic characteristics (see Eibich et al. (2016),
for example).

15 Included US cities are Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Dallas,

Houston, Los Angeles, Miami, New York, Philadelphia, and
Washington DC. The choice of cities was motivated by
selecting the ten largest US cities, all of which have well
over 300 observations in the US Poll.

16 We investigated whether there are systematic differences in

responses to the Gallup World Poll and the Gallup US Poll
surveying of the Cantril ladder. Out of the 12 US cities that
are included in the 2014-2018 World Poll, seven are also in
the top ten list of cities that we obtain from the US Poll.
Out of these seven cities, the scores for six of the cities in
the US Poll fall within the statistical confidence intervals of
the World Poll scores (Chicago, Dallas, Houston, Miami,
New York City, and Philadelphia). For Los Angeles, however,
we find that the US Poll score is significantly higher (6.96)
than the World Poll score (6.36). However, these and other
tests are based on very few observations in the World Poll
even when pooling the 2014-2018 samples (e.g. there are
only 87 observations for Los Angeles). Since there is no
systematic bias upwards or downwards when comparing
city scores between both surveys, and especially because
the Gallup US Poll score and the Gallup World Poll score
are essentially identical, we merge the US Poll with the
World Poll data without the need for any adjustments.
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